


Aftermath

by Niitza



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Atonement - Freeform, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Gen, M/M, Recovery, Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:16:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6921472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niitza/pseuds/Niitza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony takes the battle against Steve that one step too far, and has to live with the consequences.</p>
<p>Or so he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Aftermath](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11615229) by [BerilHally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BerilHally/pseuds/BerilHally)



> Inspired by [laporcupina](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/)'s [reaction post to Civil War](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/144002496434/cacw-the-reaction), especially the part about the Russos' decision _not_ to have Tony kill Steve at the end being a cop-out, which got me thinking. This is the result. I hope you enjoy?
> 
>    
>  _[BerilHally](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BerilHally)'s Chinese translation is also available here: [chapter 1](http://jing6250.lofter.com/post/436227_10ad61df) and [chapter 2 & 3](http://jing6250.lofter.com/post/436227_10b2bb0d)._

For a second he is stunned.

Because he thought, he was convinced, he _expected_ that Rogers would dodge—that _of course_ he would dodge, that he'd parry, he has the shield, for God's sake, why wouldn't he—

He's so stunned that he doesn't hear, doesn't see Barnes coming, until the man is barreling into him, catching him off guard.

He stumbles, regains his footing—or the suit does it for him, ready to retaliate, to fire in a second. But Barnes isn't attacking, he isn't even looking at him; he's already standing at the opening in the concrete, jumping, diving after Steve.

 

 

Barnes scrambles down the mountain, keeps stumbling and slipping on ice and crumbling rock and loose stones. He'd make such an easy target, even more so once he reaches the snow, deep and smooth and powdery, once he sinks into it and has to trudge and heave himself towards—

That's when Tony notices the blood.

 

 

"No no no no no," Barnes is saying when Tony comes closer.

He is kneeling and his hand fluttering, panicked, uncertain of where it can rest, where it can soothe instead of hurt. Rogers is twitching, faintly gasping, blood seeping from under his cracked helmet, down his cheek, his nose, bubbling from his mouth as he chokes. Underneath him the blood spreads, turning the snow an ever darkening pink. One of his hands is clasping Barnes' tactical vest, the grip already failing. His eyes don't leave Barnes' face.

"Come on," Barnes says—chokes. "Come on, you punk."

"You're stronger than this. That fucking serum is stronger than this," he says.

"We've barely found each other again," he says.

 

 

There is a sound, not strong enough to be called a rattle. Then nothing.

Rogers' fingers loosen, slip even as Barnes tries to catch them.

Barnes howls.

 

 

What Tony will remember afterwards—what he'll wish he didn't remember, what he'll be ashamed of, is the thought, slithering at the back of his numb brain, bitter, vindictive:

_Now you know what it feels like_.

 

 

He barely catches the shield when Barnes hurls it at him. It's too haphazardly done for the gesture to be dangerous; it has no aim, no thought, it's nothing but the instinctive lashing out of a wounded animal, of a man ripped in two.

Tony looks down at it, clasped in his hands, round, solid, flawless but for the scratching marks T'Challa's claws left on the paint.

He feels oddly detached.

He looks back up at Barnes. His eyes—

 

 

" _Kill me_ ," Barnes bellows, throwing his arm to the side, leaving himself wide open. His face is a rictus, a mess of pain and tears. He's stood up, but he isn't steady on his legs, ready to fall down for good. "Go on, do it. Isn't that what you wanted?"

 

 

It's only once he's in the Quinjet, flying over the tundra, that Tony realizes that he didn't do it.

He just left—he doesn't quite remember how. He left Barnes there, left him in the snow, alone but for—

For—

 

 

It's only once he's leaving Russia's territorial waters (not that any radar would've noticed his trespassing), once he catches sight of the shield, propped up against the wall of the cockpit, that he starts to realize what happened.

What it means.

What he _did_.

He changes course.

 

 

Ross is surprised to see him come back so soon, he knows. Suspicious.

He has a right to be, Tony thinks, and announces he's here to give his report.

 

 

Ross wouldn't believe him, if it weren't for the shield, or for the parts of Barnes' metal arm Tony picked up (why did he pick that up? _when_ did he pick that up?). It's proof enough.

For some reason, though, Tony suspects that the most convincing element is the look on his face (he still feels numb, still feels stunned), the waver in his voice that he can't quite suppress.

 

 

(Barnes isn't dead, he knows but doesn't say. Because he's as good as. Somehow Tony knows he won't leave Rogers. Maybe he'll let himself die. Maybe he'll let himself freeze.

Again.)

 

 

_Arrest me_ , he thinks but cannot say, because his report is over, because he's run out of words (who would've thought that would ever happen?). _Go on, do it. I'm dangerous, can't you see? I'm like them, I'm worse, I'm the one who's out of control, so go on. Arrest me. Isn't that what you wanted?_

But all Ross does is let his finger run along the edge of the shield, considering. There is something coveting about the gesture, bordering on smug. Tony almost bristles, almost snaps at him to keep his hands off.

(He doesn't deserve to even _touch_ —)

"There will be consequences for you, of course," Ross says. "Sanctions. Because you _were_ out of line. But," he goes on, "you did fulfill the mission first assigned to you." And since when was Tony's mission to _kill_ instead of capture?

"Nice of you to finally deliver," Ross ends in a sneer, and lets him go.

 

 

He should probably go down to the cells, Tony thinks vaguely. Tell the others.

Only he can't.

He _can't_.

So he goes home.

 

 

Surprisingly—or not—Natasha is there when he arrives at the compound. She's waiting, arms crossed, lips pinched.

In any other situation Tony would probably have a quip ready to forestall anything she has to say (not that it actually would). Not this time.

It doesn't matter, though: the frown that appears on her face when she sees him (what a wreck he must look like) smoothes out into the blankest of masks when she sees what he's carrying.

"Tony," she says, maybe as a warning, maybe as a denial.

Her eyes don't leave the shield.

(Ross wanted to keep it, but Tony didn't let him. It is Stark property. He has the documents to prove it. Somewhere. Probably.)

"Tony," she says again, and he sees the rest of the sentence change from 'What happened?' to: "What did you _do_?"

And how terrible a thing it must have been, for a spy, a double agent, an individual so fluent in games and lies and moral compromise to look at him with utter betrayal in her eyes.

 

 

She is gone by evening. Tony isn't surprised.

He isn't surprised either when, less than two weeks later, there is a breach at the Raft.

How dumb of Ross, of _everyone_ , to think that they could hold them all in.

 

 

He realizes—expects, maybe even hopes—that there are now several fugitives probably gunning for him. Dangerous fugitives.

There is Natasha, most definitely. Although he then realizes that she knows what this has done to him—has been doing to him, the realization sinking a little bit deeper every day, cutting through him more painfully and surely than shrapnel ever did—and that's the thing, about people who've acquired a conscience when before they had none: they know how much harm it can do.

Wilson, on the other hand, wouldn't be above punching him in the face, for Ro— for his friend's sake, but also for his own, for what Tony did to him: he made him into the traitor who turned his friend in, the instrument that got his friend killed, and that, that is personal. But even as he thinks that Tony realizes that no, Sam wouldn't. He wouldn't _murder_. He is a good man—the better man.

Wanda, then. Tony doesn't know her well, but she's definitely the most dangerous of the three, and most of all the less stable. The weeks spent in solitary confinement can't have helped, and now Rogers is gone—one of the rare anchors in her life, her mentor, maybe even—("She's a kid!" Steve had exclaimed)—a parental figure, and wasn't that the worst kind of irony?

He won't stop her if she comes for him. He won't stop any of them.

He's surprised, every day, when they don't.

 

 

It takes him far too long to realize that Rogers' corpse is probably still up there, somewhere in Russia, rotting—or, no, freezing, again. He didn't give the exact coordinates of the base in his report to Ross—was too shellshocked to have kept them in mind—but for some reason Ross hasn't asked for them, not then, not since. As if there was no need for proof, in the end. As if the event, conveniently remote, could be left there, set aside, forgotten. As if it hadn't happened, as if _nothing_ had happened: as if Captain America had never been found, never been retrieved, never been made to wake up to a world he didn't belong in anymore, and asked to fight for it again.

But it did happen, and even now Steve Rogers deserves better than to remain lost in an icy grave.

Tony is already in the jet before he thinks to wonder whether the same goes for Barnes, too.

 

 

He doesn't find anything.

He finds the bank of snow where it happened, but it is all he finds: snow. No blood, no footprints, no trace, nothing but a smooth white expanse, a blank slate, a blanket thrown over the past, no matter how recent.

The rest of the base is as he left it: the cryogenic tanks with their dead occupants, the— the chair in the middle, the computers. All quiet, unchanged, covered in a thin layer of dust.

Back in the jet he hacks into UN files, the CIA's, everywhere he can think of, everywhere he can get access to without being too easily noticed. There is nothing about any unit sent to verify his report, nothing about a retrieval operation, past or future.

(The only thing there is is about Col. Zemo, which T'Challa captured and brought in, doing the job Tony wasn't doing, too busy blasting Captain America to pieces to try and get to his friend.)

He sits in the jet, staring at the landscape through the windshield: a cold white plain, infinite, undisturbed.

Did Barnes find the strength to drag Rogers to a secluded spot, found them a shelter, a hole in the world to be their common grave?

Or did Ross _have_ their bodies retrieved, but kept it all secret, undocumented, untraceable, as he would any information he could get on the serum by cutting, analyzing, experimenting?

Or was it Natasha, after freeing the others, after freeing Wilson, who came to get them and give them a proper burial, a final resting place?

He hopes for the latter.

He wishes there was a way for him to know for sure.

He wishes—

 

 

_It wasn't worth it_ , he thinks later, much later, looking at the shield. That's all there is left, all he has left.

Everything is hazy, muddled, has been since everything happened but now at least there is a reason for it, now he's lost count of the number of glasses he's knocked back—except no, not everything is blurred, muffled, and no matter how much he drinks he knows that that one thing won't disappear, won't stop ringing through him, resounding like a hammer on white-hot metal. The thought, the knowledge.

_It wasn't worth it_.

 


	2. T'Challa

He found Barnes kneeling in the snow besides the Captain.

The Captain's helmet was off, Barnes threading the fingers of his right hand—his only hand—through blond hair matted with ice and sweat and blood. He was mumbling. Around them the snow was stained, pink and red.

The mumbling stopped when Barnes heard T'Challa approach. He looked up, eyes sharpening in recognition, the look in them growing tense and then, somehow, relieved.

 

 

"I am not here to fight," T'Challa said, and there was no mistaking it: the dimming of Barnes' expression, the slumping of his shoulder; it was defeat. It was disappointment.

He stepped forward carefully.

"I cannot give you what you wish for," he said. "But I can offer you a safe place, and a place for him to rest, with the dignity he deserves."

Barnes didn't answer at once. He looked around them at the snow, the ice, the mountains and the plain, desert and sterile. For a moment, T'Challa thought he was going to refuse, ask to be left there, in this cold emptiness, where he maybe believed he belonged.

But then he looked down at the Captain, and nodded.

 

 

"I want to go back into the ice," Barnes said during the flight, confirming T'Challa's suspicions. "After."

He was sitting next to the Captain, his eyes never leaving his friend's pale, broken face—not even to look at Zemo, bound less than ten feet away. Barnes' shoulders were bowed, crushed by the weight of the past, of the present—the shoulders of a man worn to the bone. A man who needed rest. Who needed peace.

If T'Challa could give that to him, he would.

"Wakanda is a leading country in the medical field," he said. "If this is what you want, you will have it. We will make sure that you are comfortable."

 

 

Once they'd arrived he entrusted the Captain to the funeral home that took care of the royal family and the dignitaries of the realm—all its workers were sworn to secrecy.

He had to hold Barnes back when the Captain was carried away: the cleaning of the dead was not something for the living to see.

"Don't worry," he told Barnes when the man let out an involuntary, plaintive sound. "We will give you all the time you need with him once he is ready."

 

 

He had Barnes discreetly sent to the closest hospital to have his wounds treated and the remnants of his metal arm removed and cleaned—not that Barnes seemed to care about any of that. He obediently climbed into the ambulance, though.

Back in the palace, T'Challa made arrangements for Zemo to be delivered to the proper authorities. He was finishing a phone call when an employee from the funeral home arrived, asking to see him.

"He's still bleeding," she said. "Very sluggishly, his pulse is barely there, but. He's alive."

 

 

The Captain was transferred to the hospital. The doctors took a look at him, set up a blood transfusion, wheeled him into surgery. They had no idea what they were doing, T'Challa knew—such extensive wounds would've killed anyone else—, but they tried. The reports he received were doubtful at first, then baffled, then amazed. The Captain's body had sunk into some sort of an hibernating state, they told him, waiting for the right conditions in which it could start healing, and now that it had them it was waking up, taking everything they gave to it—blood, nutrition, sutures—to work towards healing itself, at an amazing rate.

T'Challa waited until the first round of surgery was done, until the doctors felt confident that the Captain would pull through, to go find Barnes. He'd been put in his own room, in the private wing of the hospital. No one would know that he was there.

He was sitting up in bed, staring at the sky through the window, lost in thoughts—but he blinked out of it and straightened when T'Challa entered, looking hopeful.

T'Challa had to shake his head. "He still needs surgery," he explained.

Barnes' face folded in confusion. T'Challa smiled.

"Your friend is alive."

 

 

As a new king he had many duties, and it was several days before he could find the time to briefly come by the hospital for a visit. Rogers was sleeping, Barnes sitting at his bedside. Since he had been allowed into the room he hadn't left. A cot had had to be set up in a corner for him to sleep on.

"The doctors think he'll be well enough to be moved in two days," T'Challa said.

Barnes nodded: he knew.

The facility the Captain was to be sent to was situated far away from the capital, near the mountains. T'Challa trusted the personal of this private wing, but one could never be too careful. Besides, both the Captain and Barnes would benefit from the quiet.

"The facility is equipped with a cryogenic chamber," T'Challa said. "If that is still your intention."

"It is," Barnes replied in a low voice. He didn't look away from the Captain's face, slack and peaceful in sleep. Their hands were joined on top of the covers. "But not yet. I have to make sure he's all right. But once he's recovered enough…"

T'Challa nodded, and had the specialists of the facility informed.

 

 

Natasha Romanov finds them, weeks later. Somehow T'Challa isn't surprised.

He is made aware of her presence as soon as she enters the perimeter of the facility where his two guests are recovering. He mulls it over for a second, then instructs the guards to let her through, far enough to see into the garden, where he knows Barnes and Rogers will be at this hour of the day.

("I guess I'm not a Captain anymore," Steve Rogers said, and while his tone was a bit dry, a bit frayed, there was something light about it too. "Please call me Steve." But T'Challa couldn't be that familiar to a man who still called him Your Highness.)

Once she's seen them he has her caught and brought to the capital, to him, by a squad of Dora Milaje. (He is not taking any risks.) He has to make sure that she won't talk—Barnes and Rogers both deserve their peace—but after what she did in Leipzig, he already suspects that she won't.

"Thank you for this," she tells him. It sounds much more honest and heartfelt than the apology she gave his father, not because it is more meant, but because the reason for it is much more personal. It is significant, he knows, that she allows him to see and realize that.

 

 

She also says: "I know someone who might help Barnes."

 

 

Barnes is uncertain about Wanda Maximoff, that much is clear. But in the past few months, as Rogers has recovered, it's been obvious that Barnes has too, and that his resolve to go back into the ice has waned accordingly. In Rogers' presence he thrives, like a valley thawing at the end of winter, cold and mud draining away in a young stream while snowdrops and crocuses bloom on the greening slopes.

He keeps pushing back the moment he'll have to make his decision, T'Challa knows. Rogers' headaches are gone but his stomach still aches and tugs when he walks, or laughs. It's too soon to tell whether that might be permanent. T'Challa hopes not: Steve Rogers deserves a life free of pain. And James Barnes deserves a chance, a choice.

Barnes is uncertain about Maximoff, but Rogers trusts her, and Barnes trusts Rogers.

Most of all, he wants to live.

 

 

T'Challa doesn't know what happens, what Maximoff does. She doesn't seem so certain either. She tries several times, or has to do whatever it is in several steps, all involving that eerie red light T'Challa remembers enveloping his own limb, a prickle of power, like static, that had thrown him to the side like he was nothing. Barnes reacts to it with barely a twitch. It doesn't seem painful, but it doesn't seem pleasant either. Yet once it's done—

He has the words repeated to him, once, twice, again—and again, and again, and again, and—

Until he bursts into laughter, bursts into tears, when it finally, really registers.

"I'm free," he says, and Rogers is here to catch him when he stumbles, when he collapses, half delirious, all his strings cut off by relief, by incredulity, by joy. "It's gone, they're gone," he babbles. "I'm _free_."

 

 

When he manages to let go of Rogers he staggers, catches sight of Maximoff.

"Thank you," he says. T'Challa has rarely heard anything so heartfelt. " _Thank you_ , you can't know, thank—"

Words aren't enough, apparently. He clasps her cheek with his hand and plants a kiss on her lips—"Woah," Wilson says, eyebrows darting up—, another on her forehead, and, with his lips pressed to her skin, he whispers one more _thank you_ , fiercely, the words pouring from the entirety of his being.

He steps back and his eyes go unerringly back to Rogers, who is beaming. Natasha is smirking, although her relief is clear. Wanda is bright red. Barnes slings his arm around Rogers' shoulders and kisses him too. It's a celebration, but also a homecoming, obvious in the way Rogers reacts, in the trust of his eyes closing, the familiarity of his hands settling on Barnes' waist.

" _Woah_ ," Wilson repeats, eyebrows itching higher.

 


	3. After

Tony Stark puts an end to the Avengers Initiative—it's not like there are many of them left at this point anyway—rendering the Sokovia Accords null and void.

He destroys his suits—weapons of mass destruction, all of them, what the hell was he thinking?

(But he knows, he knows.)

He hangs the shield.

(He shouldn't be the one doing that.)

 

 

The question of enhanced humans remains. The UN council, pushed by Ross, reconvenes to discuss it.

But this time, Stark has had the time to think about the implications—he's _seen_ the implications—and he's ready.

(He wasn't before and damn it, _damn him_ , why is he always like that, jumping on the first solution he believes he sees, clinging to it, rushing into it, only taking the time afterwards—once it's too late—to make sure that it's sound, to think about the consequences?)

Thing is, he still approves of the idea of control. After what happened— _what he did_ —, how could he not? But he thinks of Wanda in the Raft, of Barton and Wilson. Of Barnes, even if it still hurts. He thinks of Parker. He thinks of Steve.

They're human, all of them. They have faults, limits. They have rights. The problem is, people like Ross would only be too happy to take that away from them, he now realizes. And they might even have the power to do so.

But Tony Stark has power too. He has money, and lawyers, and privilege, and determination. He's not afraid to use them.

It won't be the first legal battle he's led.

 

 

"We should let him know," Rogers says. On the TV screen, a news bulletin shows Tony Stark stepping out of a courtroom, flanked by lawyers and PAs, ignoring the journalists throwing questions at him. It isn't the first trial he's been involved in, and it won't be the last.

For the past months he's been at the front of the trials of his former teammates—held in absentia—, his army of lawyers slowly but surely reducing their sentences to fines for property damage and warnings. As long as they don't start up again with the vigilantism, as long as they don't try and take back the gear that has been confiscated, neither Wilson, nor Barton, nor Lang now, should be bothered.

Maximoff is a more delicate case, that much is clear. Yet it looks like they might get there too.

"Not yet," Romanov replies to Rogers' suggestion. In a day she'll be gone, with Maximoff, to lay low in a location only she knows. There is still a cold undercurrent in her voice: she doesn't forgive easily.

"Yeah," Barnes grumbles. "Let him stew in it." T'Challa suspects he never will forgive. He won't even try.

Wilson glances at them both and doesn't say anything. He doesn't look like he disagrees, even though he looks like he knows he should. His own departure is planned in two weeks. It will take him to South Africa, then probably the UK, before he starts thinking about maybe resurfacing in the US.

Rogers and Barnes will stay in Wakanda a bit longer. Rogers isn't quite recovered yet; Barnes has started seeing one of the facility's therapists, and he still needs to decide whether he'll take up T'Challa on his offer to fit him with a new prosthetic. And after that… They still have a lot to figure out.

Rogers looks at Romanov, at Wilson, at Barnes in turns. He looks at Maximoff, who shrugs, clearly unconcerned by the state of Tony Stark's psyche.

He presses his lips together. T'Challa can almost hear the protest on the tip of his tongue ("I don't know if you have noticed, but he didn't _actually_ kill me."), can see him refraining from uttering it, knowing perfectly what reactions it would elicit.

Still he looks… mulish. Extremely so.

 

 

Legal matters are exhausting, is what Tony now remembers.

It's the first time he still cares about the outcome, even months down the line.

They're closing in on a deal for Wanda—not the best they could hope for, but the best they will get, he suspects. A lot of countries will refuse her any right to reside, but she shouldn't be hunted down by the entire planet, at least. And as long as no one gets wind of her using her powers, the future international legislation on enhanced humans shouldn't fall down on her either.

He hopes she's smart enough to lay low.

And then it'll come to Rogers, and to Barnes. Dead men don't get a trial, but apparently the governments have decided to keep up the pretense instead of revealing the truth.

Tony wonders whether he should do something about that.

But right now he is tired—exhausted. It's been (another) long day.

He knows it'll turn into (another) long night.

 

 

He received a message at the beginning of the second week of trials. From Pepper. For the first time in months, it had nothing to do with Stark Industries, nothing at all.

Tony hasn't answered.

He doesn't know what to say. What to make of it.

(He doesn't think he deserves any of it.

Not yet, at least.)

 

 

When he reaches the compound, he goes down to the safe.

That's where he keeps the shield, hung at eye level. Against the opposite wall there is the pod containing his last suit—the only one he hasn't destroyed, the one he was wearing when—

He hasn't repaired it, so it's pretty much the same.

He looks at the shield for a long time, looking for—he doesn't know what. Inspiration? Approval? An answer, maybe. A reassurance. A _sign_. He almost scoffs. What does he expect? It's a piece of metal—a trinket, a memento at best, a piece of junk at worst. It's nothing. Not without the man who was behind it, who wielded it, who _carried_ it and everything it symbolized.

Tony shakes himself. He goes back upstairs. He goes to the gym, to Rhodey, offers to help him through his session.

There is still much to be done.

(So much, and yet: it'll probably never be enough.

Will it?)

 

 

At the end of the session, there is a knock at the door.

"Excuse me," the delivery man says. He looks far too old to still be holding a job. "Are you Tony Stank?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is [the post on tumblr](http://princessniitza.tumblr.com/post/144711929416/fic-aftermath) if you are the reblogging kind.


End file.
